A story of a very rare encounter with a great white shark is also another in an amazing series of Juergen’s dive stories that always lure me to pack my bags and fly to Cape Town. I’ll get there eventually, next summer probably.

The main reason I’m posting this is to at least try and debunk the myth of a man eating, ferocious killer reputation the traditional media has managed to attribute to these beautiful animals. They do not eat people for no reason at all, the do not attack people for no reason at all…
Around the world less than 10 people die as a result of a shark attack every year (all 400 species of them) or about as many as are killed by lightning strikes or dogs every month.

How does that coincide with the reputation?
It doesn’t, it’s bullshit invented by the movie industry and stupid writers, reporters and other idiots. Do you fear for your life when you’re around a labrador?

With authors permission. – thanks Juergen!

A close encounter with a big fish

  by Juergen Buchelt

The 21st of July 2005 looked like one of these particularly uneventful Cape Town winter days. Nothing pointed towards the fact that it would turn into a day I will never forget. A day that bore a story to be told to children and grandchildren…
The Northwester was driving low clouds and heavy rain showers across Table Bay and the Cape Peninsula. On a day like this I am tempted to ignore the alarm clock, turn around and sleep for another hour or two.

The previous Tuesday evening I had agreed to take over the duties of Dive Master on a dive trip planned for Wednesday. Due to the rough ocean conditions, heavy rain and the howling Northwester the trip was postponed to Thursday morning.
I made my way into town through the early morning traffic and met my client and diving buddy Robert at one of the V&A Waterfronts hotels. After loading tanks at the dive shop we made our way to Simonstown where we were to meet our skipper Grant and five local divers to join us. The plan was to launch from the “Salty Sea Dog” in Simonstown Harbour for the first dive, return to the restaurant for lunch and launch again for a second dive. Despite the wind ocean conditions looked pretty good as we approached Simonstown. Our visibility indicator the wreck of the SS Clan Stuart could be made out easily from the road.
After kitting up we left the harbour heading for the Roman Rock Lighthouse. The Northwester was driving a rough surface chop dotted with small breaks towards Cape Hangklip and we had agreed to dive a site close to Simonstown to keep the boat trip reasonably short. After circling for about a minute the anchor went down on Rambler Rock, a reef pinnacle which rises to 12 metres below the surface some 400 metres to the Southeast of the lighthouse.
The first two buddy pairs got ready and entered the water. Robert and I buddied up with Kevin, a local diver who was on his own and the three of us back rolled off the boat. We had agreed to descend immediately to some five metres of depth and meet at the anchor line to make sure we don’t get carried away by the surface current. The visibility was around ten metres horizontally and probably close to 20 metres vertically and we could clearly make out the reef below us just after entering the water.

From here I will continue with an account of the next seconds as the three of us combined our observations of what will probably remain the most impressive experience in our life:
Kevin had reached a depth of some five to six metres, while I was descending down towards him. Robert was on the anchor line about a metre above me. I was facing both Kevin and Robert and exchanging ok signals when Kevin spotted a huge silhouette appearing out of the greenish gloom. Both the sheer size and the characteristic and unmistakable colour scheme of dark grey on top and white underneath did not leave any doubt: A Great White shark was paying a visit to three awkward intruders in his realm.
Usually the sharks don’t show a big deal of interest in scuba divers. Some local divers have reported sightings of Great Whites cruising past at the verge of visibility. This time the scenario evolved differently:
The shark kept on swimming directly towards Kevin when Robert also spotted the shark and responded to my “OK” with pointing towards me. With my back pointing towards the shark closing in on us I was completely unaware of it and suspected that one of the playful Cape Fur Seals had joined us for the dive. I was still descending slightly towards Kevin’s depth and directly into the path of the shark. To Kevin it looked as if the shark would swim through between my legs and ram into him.
The shark finally changed his course very slightly. The very moment when I turned expecting a big seal eyeballing me I was confronted with a dark grey dorsal fin the size of a small coffee table moving past at eye level and nothing but shark underneath and close enough to touch. All I could make out was that this was a big shark. The shark was so close that I could not make out how big. I only realized this is a big one. The shark also passed Kevin less than an arms length away and disappeared in the distance.
Kevin, who saw the sharks’ size in relation to me, and Robert, who saw the shark almost touching the two of us later agreed in the shark having been good four metres in length.
As the shark disappeared from sight I assessed our situation: The boats safety was dancing on the choppy swell only five metres above us. Unfortunately it was at the surface, the place where you definitely don’t want to be with a Great White shark in the immediate vicinity. Kevin and Robert did not seem to be or to fall into a state of panic. We had full tanks. I signalled “down” and got two “OK” immediately. The three of us dropped into a sandy gully like bricks.
Sitting on the sand at 22 metres I assessed our situation and monitored the water above us. By the reactions of my buddies I could be sure that they had seen the shark and had recognized it for what it was. We agreed by hand signal to wait for five minutes and monitor the situation.
Eventually I started to point out some features like Strawberry Anemones and fan Coral to Robert. As we did not make out any sign of the shark again I regarded every minute spend at the bottom as an extra safety margin that would make the shark loose its interest and take it further away from us.
I caught a little Puffadder Shyshark on the sand and handed it to Robert after it curled up into a doughnut. This helped him a lot to calm down. Kevin was also happy to continue the dive until he signalled a tank pressure of 110bar and that he wanted to finish the dive after 15 minutes dive time.
We grouped together closely around the anchor line and ascended monitoring each others back. We mutually agreed to have the safety stop on the boat. After telling Grant of the shark our weight belts and BCD’s were handed up quickly while we tried to resemble limpets on the Rib’s hull. Finally Robert and Kevin went on board closely followed by me.

The other buddy pairs signalled their ascend to the surface by launching their SMB and we lifted anchor and got prepared to get them on board as quickly as possible. We got all four divers out of the water safely to find them completely unaware of our encounter with the shark.

After our return to Simonstown and after talking about what each of us had seen and felt we were torn between enthusiasm and a deep humbleness.
We were privileged to experience a magnificent creature. The ocean showed us that we only count amongst the small fish by having a close encounter with a big fish.

Juergen

P.S.: Robert left to Gansbaai early this morning for two days of cage diving.